Search form

Are Religious People More Spiritual Than Atheists?

Organized religion is easy to define as group participation in beliefs and rituals. There is usually a priest, a place, and a prayer (1). Spirituality is trickier. It is often defined in terms of its opposites: anti materialism, lack of concern with worldly success, out-of-body sensations, and weakening of the ego.

The decline of religion in developed countries offers a unique perspective on the religion-spirituality connection. What happens to spirituality as organized religion declines? Are regular churchgoers more spiritual to begin with?

Are Religious People More Spiritual or Less Spiritual?

Scholars distinguish between public religiosity and private piety. People who attend church regularly may not be very religious in private. They lack private spirituality.

One index of religious depth is ethical conduct. People who attend church frequently like to adopt a high moral tone but they do not always deliver in practice. Publicly religious people are not more ethical in their conduct and actually fall short in several areas according to research (2). They are more likely than atheists to cheat on exams, for example, possibly reflecting more fear of negative evaluations by others.

Another intriguing area of failure is sexual misconduct (1). Despite espousing family values, religious conservatives spend more on online pornography. Long before the Internet, in the 1970’s, religious conservatives were more interested in casual sex with other men in public restrooms (tearoom trade) reminiscent of the Larry Craig scandal.

Religious people are focused on whether a person follows rules laid down by others. As a consequence, they have an underdeveloped capacity for moral reasoning through which thoughtful individuals devise their own ethical rules and principles (2). So their moral reasoning may be in a state of arrested development - they simply defer to the rules.

If organized religion closes some doors in regard to ethical sophistication, religious people might also be less open to a broad range of spiritual experiences. One way of investigating this issue is to compare secular developed countries with more religious poorer nations.

What happens to spirituality in secular countries?

Some of the most developed countries are already predominantly secular. So what happens to spirituality in countries where the majority is no longer religious?

Religion/spirituality is arguably a basic trait found in everyone. Spiritual experiences have a neural basis, suggesting that the human brain was molded to facilitate religious experiences.

Although there is no single “God spot” in the brain, feelings of self-transcendence are associated with reduced activity in the right parietal lobe, a part of the brain cortex located a few inches above the right ear (3). Spiritual experiences use many different parts of the brain, however. So what do people in secular countries do with these brain functions after they abandon formal religion?

Analysis of secular countries suggests a clear, if surprising, answer. Although residents typically express a casual and condescending attitude towards organized religion, their interest in spiritual questions persists. Indeed, curiosity about topics such as the origin and meaning of life increases as does interest in world religions and practices such as yoga, tai chi, and transcendental meditation (4).

Interest in many different religious traditions may be symptomatic of secularization. The spiritually curious select from a menu of global beliefs and practices without being deeply committed to any of them.

Residents of secular countries, such as Sweden or Japan, express great interest in the supernatural, particularly in fiction and entertainment. Why do people in “godless” developed countries abandon formal religious beliefs yet willingly suspend their supernatural disbelief when it comes to novels, films, and soap operas? Such contemporary fiction is replete with supernatural elements such as vampires, ghosts, angels, witchcraft, and time-traveling aliens.

It may be that however much secularists reject religious beliefs, their evolved susceptibility to supernatural belief remains. Their spiritual propensity is just as strong but it is no longer focused on organized religion.

Under the progressive Islamo-fascist ideology your children are to be and are, in more places then Britain, the spoils of war.

Organized religion today opposes me, and thus in the fine spirit of modern science i can arbitrarily make something up, thus you all endorse the above idea. As for proof, i can simply point at the Vatican and they have been doing that for hundreds of years already.

From a pure battlefield strategy it makes the most sense to let them win, and then wipe them all out in the blink of an eye.

I see no reason why these kafir jihadists should be further prevented from their terrorist bombings.

We keep using words as if they all mean the same for most of us.
What does spirituality means ? What does being religious means ?
They mean hundreds different things depending on the person.

Say the word God. We use it all the time thinking we are talking about the same thing. Since God by definition cannot be defined then we are never really talking about God, we are only talking about our own personal understanding of God.

What I see is that while the number of religious persons is decreasing (at least in Western Europe), the number of spiritual people is increasing. Less people belong to organized religions but more people are interested in addressing life beyond the boundaries of pure materialism.

Dr. Brarber wrote:It may be that however much secularists reject religious beliefs, their evolved susceptibility to supernatural belief remains. Their spiritual propensity is just as strong but it is no longer focused on organized religion.

Your phrase "susceptibility to supernatural belief" sounds a tad condescending. Let's grant that your ability to reason is excellent, better than most, but how good is your intuitive ability? It's possible that some people sense some things that you can't. Isn't it?

I don't see much advantage in rejecting religion for the atheist-materialist philosophy. That's just trading one know-it-all position for another on a matter where there is insufficient evidence to draw conclusions.

There is no advantage in accepting any religious philosophy merely because you dislike the stereotypical nature of atheism. Atheists don't claim to know-it-all. Since you see no advantage in either the religious stance nor atheist, then Pascal's Wager applies --- claiming to have a set of religious beliefs just in case that happens to be correct. Do you reject Islamic beliefs, or accept them because they might be correct too? I understand that there are atheists that are fairly aggressive, yet we don't claim to be know-it-alls. We're given that unfair branding by the religious people who become offended when we reject their particular flavor of religion. They're not really offended, they're actually embarrassed at being publicly outed as believing certain supernatural impossibilities actually happened. Of course none of them happened, but the human animal apparently requires constant reassurance that it's okay to engage such fantasy.

I have never liked the inherent threat of blackmail offered by most of Christianity and definitely implied in Pascal's Wager. I prefer to follow this approach - allegedly by Marcus Aurelius

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but...will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."

That seems quite a lot better than believe in God X, or you'll be tied down to an altar and have your lungs ritually ripped out for the rest of eternity.

I specified the materialist-atheist as a know-it-all position because it asserts, without evidence, that all that exists is matter. There are obviously different flavors of atheism.

The usual labels don't describe my position very well. As to the god versions created by the world's religions, I am an atheist, but as to the possibility of a greater reality, a realm beyond conscious reality, I am agnostic. Pascal's Wager doesn't enter into my thinking because Pascal's Wager is nonsense.

I was hoping that an article on Psychology Today's website would have more scholarly insight and meat on its bones on this topic than it did; unfortunately, this post consisted mostly of Christian-bashing in its first half, followed by an almost afterthought of "spirituality" that was poorly defined in the Swedish and Japanese populations. It was also not helpful that half of the attributed sources of scholarly information are the poster's own e-books for sale.

Psychology Today, I expected more objective science from you. How disappointing.